Low Dose Naltrexone Question: NK Cells and CD8

If I had a dollar for every person who has suggested I try Low Dose Naltrexone, I would be rich. I finally was listening to Chris Kressers podcast today and he mentioned it as well. As it is a Central Nervous System sedative in some fashion (which is exactly what I need).

My *only* abnormalities as far as bloodwork go, have been highly elevated NK Cells and very high CD8. Do I really want to be taking LDN if its going to raise them even further?

Second question:

I find it really strange that LDN apparently plays so much with endorphins. Nearly everything they say about it on the LDN website keeps referencing "endorphin" activity and "opiate receptors". First thing I thought was "Well no wonder people feel good on it. Its enhancing their feel good chemicals. But that doesn't mean its fixing their problem at all"

Can anyone comment on this? I was expecting to read that LDN played some important roles in specific immune cell activity - calming autoimmunity and enhancing other immune cells. I was not expecting to read over and over about opiate receptors and endorphines.

I'm posting a piece written by a member of the LDN yahoo forum, a very well-informed participant and activist. I'm also adding some other links for you to check out. I've now been on LDN nearly 9 months. It has most certainly increased my stamina.

How LDN Works Jayne Crocker Oct 2014

“LDN is a drug that implements the biotherapy approach to 21st century medicine which is all about artificially stimulating the body’s own defences and systems in order to restore control over chronic and systemic diseases. LDN has a demonstrable safety record with no toxicity issues, is orally delivered, making it an attractive therapy for many diseases” - LDNNow.

First off, it always helps to have an understanding of the disease we have been diagnosed with and how this disease affects our bodies. Once we understand this, can we start researching therapies gaining an insight as to how various treatments work. Then, we can make an informed decision with the therapy of our choice as to how we wish to manage our diseases.

When anyone asks how LDN works, it is important to understand that it is a ‘cell growth regulator’.

If it weren’t for the immune system, which is the human body’s natural defence against outside invaders, we would be sick all the time. This complex network of cells, organs and molecules (immune system) fights off things like hostile bacteria and viruses 24 hours a day. The immune system is a powerful protection when it’s working for us, but can also be a powerful threat when it turns against us.

Among the key players in the immune system are special white blood cells called B cells, which produce antibodies to coordinate the attack, and T cells, which carry out the attack – and, importantly, also signal when the attack should stop. When the immune system launches an aggressive attack on infected cells, healthy tissues and cells can be mistakenly killed or damaged in the process as it fails to shut off that attack. The type of disease that is diagnosed depends on the type of body tissue or organ that is affected. The more dysfunctional and out of balance the immune system is, the more voraciously it will attack the body’s tissues.

When cells of the body at a particular site start to grow out of control, they may become cancerous. Cancer cell growth is different from normal cell growth. Cancer cells continue to grow and form new, abnormal cells. In addition, these cells can also invade other tissues. Large numbers of cancer cells build up because they multiply (proliferate) out of control, or because they live much longer than normal cells, or both.

For anyone living with a disease, our goal is to quench the inflammation of the autoimmune reaction – to allow the immune system to do its job while keeping it from doing further damage – and to “reset” the immune system so that it will work normally on its own. This is where Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) becomes relevant.

When taking LDN to manage a chronic disease, the effect you want is to regulate these cells and slow down the proliferation. As Naltrexone is a cell growth regulator, research has shown that by taking a very low dose of Naltrexone and benefitting from the rebound effect (the upregulation and improved interaction between OGF - Opioid Growth Factor, chemically termed met-5-enkephalin and its receptor OGFr), are we able to repress the proliferation of these cells.

The rebound effect is what happens when the medicine you have taken clears your system leaving you with the benefit of its action.

This action is dependent on the OGF-OGFr axis which serves to promote homeostasis. The OGF-OGFr axis is a biological system and operates as a tonically active negative regulator of cell proliferation. By taking LDN, we are able to modulate the OGF-OGFr axis allowing us to harness the body’s own chemistry to manipulate the immune-system response (improved cell interaction and immune function). Anything we can do to restore balance to the body and bring our ‘systems’ back into balance by slowing down errant cell proliferation (cancerous or immune) can only be beneficial to anyone living with chronic sickness.

LDN blocks your opioid receptors for a period of roughly 4 hours. During this time it tricks your body into believing it is not producing any endorphins or enkephalins, specifically met-enkephalin known as Opioid Growth Factor, or OGF. As a result, the body compensates by stimulating an enhanced production of these opioids along with their receptors. Only when LDN has cleared your system does the rebound effect come into play where we are able to repress the proliferation of these cells in a non-toxic manner.

This effect continues long after LDN is no longer in your system i.e. 1-5 days and the mechanism of action works just the same regardless of the time of day LDN is taken because it acts for this amount of time. Dosing is very individual depending on how quick a patient metabolizes LDN and the length of time the rebound effect lasts. These are open questions.

In addition to repressing the proliferation of T cells, B cells, and some types of cancer cells from the rebound effect, an upregulation of OGF has also been found to regulate the growth of astrocytes that form scar tissue in neurological damage, suppress the action of microglia in neurodegenerative disorders and inhibit angiogenesis (blood vessel growth) in cancer. This is important for tumour control because tumours need to develop blood vessels fast to stay alive, so inhibiting this will block tumour growth and even cause parts of the tumour to die off if they outgrow their blood supply.

Research has also shown that by combining LDN with standard-of-care chemotherapeutic agents, an enhanced anticancer action has been observed where, LDN may also serve as a protector of any possible adverse effects from chemotherapy. Clinical trials have also shown that LDN can be used as an adjunct therapy to the more conventional medicines.

There is also exciting new research being done with LDN to treat pain looking at a different mechanism. Dr Jarred Younger and colleagues at Stanford are reviewing the evidence that LDN may operate as a novel anti-inflammatory agent in the central nervous system via the Toll Like Receptor 4’s (TLR4’s) action on microglial cells. This may represent LDN as being one of the first glial cell modulators to be used for the management of chronic pain disorders.

Having the ability to take a medication that inhibits cell proliferation for those cells that have only been activated to proliferate through the disease process, yet leaves the healthy cells alone is rapidly gaining the recognition it deserves.

It is simple to see why so many Drs and patients are opting for this affordable non-toxic biotherapy approach when treating ‘cell proliferative disorders’.

Question one:- During the four hours LDN blocks your receptors, your body is still producing endorphins but because the receptors are blocked, it actually thinks it isnâ€™t producing any endorphins and as a result goes into overdrive to compensate for what it believes isnâ€™t happening (but is). Hence the â€˜surgeâ€™ and â€˜increaseâ€™ of endorphins.

Question two and three:- Dr Gironi published the results of her clinical trial with MS where she was measuring endorphin levels throughout the six months of the study, the average increase of endorphins measured at 3 months and 6 months shows:-
3 months - endorphin levels increased by 30% from when they started the trial
6 months - endorphin levels increased by 60% from the beginning of the trial

Interestingly, one month after stopping LDN (7 months later), participants endorphin levels increased by 100% from when they started the trial “ so the rebound effect from taking LDN continued after taking LDN for six months, even though they hadn't taken one dose of LDN in four weeks.

What we are doing by taking LDN, is bringing our immune system up to a level where it can produce the same amount of endorphins as it did when we were healthy allowing it to function efficiently once again. Function is more important than measuring â€˜blood levelsâ€™, although personally I too would be interested in finding a way of doing this.

If healthy people took LDN they would not see the same ‘surge’ in endorphins as those in the MS study, if any at all.

Naltrexone is an opioid receptor blocker. It was developed for use in treating opiate addiction and alcohol addiction. The effect of low doses is I think not well known, but it appears that it may be paradoxical, in that a low dose causes a rebound effect in endorphin release, hence making you feel better....
If you look up naltrexone you can find details of how it works.

@PhoenixBurger , I have the same question, as my NK cells numbers are already high, and I have also elevated auto-antibodies (ANA, ScL, Sjogren etc). I was proposed LDN but would not want my immune system to 'fire' more than it already does.

There are no studies showing LDN increases NK cells or lymphocytes. It does the opposite - it stops the proliferation of cells that are highly active (proliferating) and in fact, by taking a low dose of naltrexone, you benefit from the upregulation of the body's own met enkephalin (known as OGF) which goes to work once LDN has cleared your receptors (4 hours later). The remaining 20 hours in a day suppresses the lymphocytes as these studies demonstrate:-